Law at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) opinions?

I’ll give you my personal laydown.

I’m currently enrolled onto Queen Mary LLB Senior Status starting this Septmeber 2018.

I chose Queen Mary solely based on the 2018 rankings. I was overwhelmingly impressed with The Guardian reputing Queen Mary Law School as below Oxbridge - 3rd in the UK. The Independent ranked Queen Mary 7th. QS ranked Queen Mary as 5th in the UK. I did some extra research and asked around what people thought of QMUL and its Law department. Everyone pretty much shared the same perception as me: Your going to the flagship department of QMUL and the fact they ask A*AA from current sixth formers mirrors the confidence of the Law department and what it has achieved over the last decade. I was reading some threads on QMUL Law Department from 10 years back on the TSR and comparing the opinions from a decade ago to now, the evaluative difference is that of night and day. Around 2007, people were already beginning to form a bold and strong perception of QMUL Law as deserving of better reputation from recruiters and it was discussed as a top 10 law firm in the UK at the time. The only ranking where QMUL Law does not fare well is The University Guide which places it at 21. Personally, if the University of Aberdeen sits at 4th/5th across the UK and 8 non-RG Law faculties sit within the top 15, I would keep a trusting distance as to how universities were analysed and thus ranked. I’m not looking down upon the University of Aberdeen but you get my point. I mean it’s ranked higher than Glasgow and St Andrews if we just case study Scottish Law rankings on its own.

I recently read QMUL Law’s Legal Career Advice Centre and their homepage gave me so much confidence going forward. Like many at my stage, we enrol into law school to hopefully become a legal practitioner (solicitor or barrister). QMUL Law’s Legal Career Advice Centre’s homepage literally begins with this frank introduction. What follows is a whole list of events, workshops and fairs that guarantees just about every top magic circle firm’s involvement. If you change the website’s label of QMUL Law to either Oxbridge, you’d say to yourself: ‘Yea this looks right from what I’d expect’.

Also, you need to bear in mind how different QMUL Law’s LLB programme structure is compared to Oxbrdige and potentially its London rivals. Oxbridge and Durham and the old school Law department build their programmes top-down. However, QMUL’s LLB is bottom-up. This means that the former, Oxbridge and the traditionalists, have a strong academic and theoretical approach to the study and how Law is to be taught. Oxford goes as far as to label its LLB as ‘jurisprudence’ which on the most basic level is the philosophy of the law. QMUL LLB is practical in its focus and therefore how law is taught is centralised on its practical value and use in the legal industrial context today. Both course programmes have their perks and cons.

My honest opinion is simple: If you’ve got Oxbridge, take it. If Not, your next best shot is Queen Mary Law. Coming back to my first point about understanding UK Uni’s is that you pick departments and programmes, not uni’s unless its Oxbridge. It’s not America, where it works the other way around. Some departments are highly established as better than Oxbridge. Manchester’s Physics department asks A*A*A when Oxbridge physicists asks A*AA. Simply because, every keen been physicist knows that Manchester’s Physics is better than Oxbridge Physics. Same applies for the arts. University of Arts London is better than Oxbridge for programmes such as multimedia other media related programmes. If you want to ask about how Queen Mary Law fares with its London counterparts; my answer is pretty simple and straightforward. If your an Econ student, aim for LSE as Econ at LSE means your with the best economists of your generation. If your a management student, aim for UCL, same rope applies. If your history or philosophy or English go to King’s, same rope applies here too. If your looking at Law, go to Queen Mary Law. It doesn’t have the prestige or tradition with the likes of Oxbridge, Nottingham, Durham and even Bristol. However, recruiters these days are on top of these developments and Queen Mary Law is a tree slightly taller than the rest but just below Oxbridge and in particular it’s LLB a refreshing new type of tree that stems and has grown in its own way. Oh and I’m not here to bash, but I met a LSE Law grad who came out with a high 2:2, I wasn’t very impressed with his intelligence. Anyone form HK reading this post, time to burst the HKU bubble, I met a HKU Law student and I don’t want to be mean but she came across as unknowledgable. The nice lady said she found the LNAT too difficult and therefore applied for HKU Law. I scored 28 on the LNAT and that was only with two weeks preparation and no essay practice. I wouldn’t say the LNAT was easy but by no means would I say it was difficult.

Personally, I’m currently with the kudos that being a Queen Mary Law student is more prestigious than all the other London competitive peers. This is my feeling based on the things I’ve researched. At the end of the day, Law is thoroughly competitive. Everyone knows it’s something like 36-38% acceptance rate for QMUL Law. For Oxbridge it’s something like 24-28% acceptance rate. Other uni’s you can get an idea. For me, instead of getting hung up on so many factors, just go back to the statistics. The facts don’t lie. Queen Mary has been ranked third by The Guardian for the second year running. It’s been in the top 5 and top 10 UK Law schools for the last decade across the majority of law school ranking platforms. Looking at how many top law firms go to Queen Mary and work with its undergraduates is refreshing for heuristic confidence. I look forward to anyone’s reply to this post - if there is any.

Thanks, I hope QMUL willl be a good experience. I think your point about missed A Level offer’s is harsh. The BBC said last summer only like 40% of sixth formers actually met their A Level offer. This phenomenon is nationwide and can’t just be thrown onto any university. Your point about myopic, can you like expand further? Sincerely, I’m curious how you come to that conclusion because my research is purely factual and if you found anything to attain your perspective, I’d like to know more about it. And mate, not QMUL marketing, I’m just laying my own personal perspective down based upon factual research. Feel free to write back but can you back your stuff up rather than throw accusations without any substance.

I did mention on the University guide that QMUL is ranked 21! I was being fair. However, if you pitch The Guardian, The Independent and QS all putting Queen Mary in the top 5 and the University Guide ranking it at 21, it does give the impression that the latter is a bit dodgy? No? I mean like I said, how can the University of Aberdeen sit at 4/5 on the nationwide law school rankings and East Anglia come into the top 10? It put LSE and UCL in the top 20. And thanks for your advice, I’ll see what i can do in my final year to secure a possible master’s module in arbitration, insurance or shipping!

I know this may be irrelevant but how did you learn to speak English so good that you got accepted to Queen Mary University? Most Italians don't bother learning English properly and even if they do they tend be quite poor at it. Are you Asian by any chance?

You could come to another conclusion. Rather than the Guardian and others being correct and CUG likely wrong; maybe all of them are wrong but CUG is the least. That is the more likely story.



Not to the same degree, as mentioned.

It's actually difficult to be that wrong about stuff.

Hey guys,
I'm Italian and I got an offer to study law (LLB) at Queen Mary.
I need to be sincere: my dream university was King's, but got rejected because I miserably failed the LNAT.
Anyway, I've seen that Queen Mary was ranked as the 3rd UK university for law just after Oxbridge by The Guardian in 2016 (but I'm kinda doubtful about it) and QS World University Ranking ranked it 35th for law (the year before it was 45th!). Somebody even told me that now Queen Mary's law department is even better than King's.
I've seen that is a very up and coming university and that is very "prestigious" just for its law department.
I tried to find out something about QMUL law here in this forum, but somebody says that it's over rated, somebody else says that is under rated... Really, I can't understand.
My dream job is to be an international lawyer/barrister specialized in human rights and international law: do you know Amal Clooney? Yeah, something like that. I know, I'm very ambitious, but I'm 19 and I think that everybody at this age has a dream. The fact is that Amal Clooney attended Oxford...
What do you think of Queen Mary's law and of the campus in general? Please, I need advice!